


Burned Silk, Buckled Leather

by RuinsPlume



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Fingering, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief Mention of a Wide Variety of Kinks and Fetishes, Catharsis, Cross-Generation Relationship, Daddy Kink, Emotional Bathtub Sex, Hand Jobs, M/M, Shame, Sirius Black Lives, Watersports, sub space, top space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2020-12-24 12:01:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuinsPlume/pseuds/RuinsPlume
Summary: When Sirius discovers a down-and-out Draco Malfoy lurking around the edges of a Muggle kink club, he thinks he knows just what Draco needs. He isn't expecting to run into some long-buried needs of his own.





	Burned Silk, Buckled Leather

**Author's Note:**

> Canon compliant for marriages, births and deaths through May 1998—with the exception of Sirius, who is very much alive :D 
> 
> Big thanks: to the mods, for this wonderful fest; to pauraque for getting me started; and especially to bigblackdog for her generous and insightful alpha, beta, and handholding. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

Sirius sits alone on a barstool in the Realm and gazes through the archway into the dungeon, his eyes falling on a bloke in a leather harness bent over a spanking bench. The Realm is a Muggle club, so the whiskey is not very good, and not for the first time Sirius wishes he'd sneaked in a flask of Ogden's to keep him company. He’d thought coming here tonight would take his mind off things, but spectacle notwithstanding, he’s having a hard time paying attention. He tries to refocus on the scenes unfolding on the other side of the arch, in the dungeon part of the club. A chubby boy with a rose tattooed on his chest stands very still while a girl with purple hair weaves blue rope around him, finishing her handiwork with an elaborate knot Sirius thinks is called Turk’s head. He's never bothered to learn rope, but he does like to watch it. Seeing an elegant pattern emerge from heaps of coils is oddly soothing. Not this time, though: the girl’s bright hair and chunky combat boots remind Sirius of his dead cousin. He turns abruptly back to the bar and takes a long swallow of his drink, the alcohol burn doing nothing to ease the tightness in his throat. He hasn’t even been to see the baby. His grief is still too raw to bear the faces of Remus and Tonks gazing out at him from the living brightness of of their child. 

_If Remus hadn’t got her up the duff and married her, they’d both be alive now,_ he thinks viciously. It seems logical from his current vantage point on this barstool, where he plans to spend the evening soaking in indifferent voyeurism and bad Muggle whiskey. He takes another long sip, feeling the alcohol begin to dampen the vibrations of the swarm of bees that seems to have taken up semi-permanent residence in his chest. That’s what it feels like most days, missing Remus. Missing Harry, who is very much alive but grown up and gone, off playing happy families with Ginny to whom he is _engaged to be married_. Sirius takes out a packet of clove cigarettes and lights one; smoke calms the bees as well. 

It was Harry’s birthday yesterday. Sirius had bought two tickets for the Puddlemere match as a surprise, but then Harry had rung him up to ask if Sirius would feed his cat over the weekend because he was going to be spending his birthday in Wales with Ginny watching the Harpies. Sirius drinks off the rest of his whiskey. It’s his own fault Harry’s gone, isn’t it? Sirius was always gone when Harry needed him, locked up first in Azkaban and then in Grimmauld Place and then behind the Veil. And now at last Sirius is here and able to be his family, but Harry has moved on. This is a fact that definitely requires more drinking. 

Sirius looks around for the bartender, his eyes falling on the customer who’s currently got her attention, a young twink whose clothes instantly give him away as either a gawker or a very green newbie. His black jeans are too fashionably cut and the studded collar around his neck is simply ridiculous; even from two bar stools away, Sirius can tell it’s a cheap fake, one of those vinyl and fabric nightmares that falls apart the first time you sweat on it, and the lock dangling from its D-ring is so tiny and flimsy it appears to have been stolen off a child’s diary. The kid probably bought the thing in a discount shop on King’s Road an hour before coming here. 

Sirius nods to the bartender for another whiskey as the twinkie orders a Carling, poor dear. This is going from bad to worse, and Sirius is torn between wanting to go rescue him and wanting to sit back and enjoy the show. He leans forward on the bar to get a better look at the boy, whose badly sunburned face is half-obscured by a fall of pale blond hair. Some half-buried memory stirs in Sirius’s mind, but he doesn’t try to excavate it—between the Dementors and the Veil and the war, so many of his memories have been reduced to rubble that on bad days, when the bees are most active, the inside of his mind looks like London after the Blitz. 

“Four pounds,” the bartender says to the twink, planting her hands on her hips with barely concealed impatience. 

The boy tugs his wallet out of the front pocket of his Muggle jeans, his long, sunburned fingers nervously fumbling with the Muggle bills inside, and all once Sirius catches, mixed in with the boy’s awkward, jerky movements, a flash of magic. A tiny, wordless spell that eases the wallet into his unsteady hands. The boy’s a wizard. And now Sirius recognizes him. 

It’s Lucius Malfoy’s boy. In a Muggle kink club, no less, and _oh,_ this is going to be glorious. Sirius remembers, with a clarity reserved for the years that preceded his Azkaban damage, Malfoy senior at Hogwarts, a self-satisfied, entitled prick who wore his blood status the way other boys wore cologne—you could smell it on him from all the way across the room. At twenty years’ distance Sirius can still hear Lucius’s ringing drawl, in that tone all young Slytherins of Sacred Twenty-Eight families affected to deliver the bored, yet razor-sharp remarks with which they ruled the lesser members of their House. 

An image of Regulus, his dark head lost among a huddle of Slytherins, swims up through Sirius’s consciousness, slippery as an eel. His stomach lurches and he turns away only to have the bartender’s voice hook him back when he overhears her say sharply, “You can’t give me that. This is a nightclub, not a fucking bank.” 

The little Malfoy is attempting to pay with a hundred-pound note. 

Sirius isn’t sure why he intervenes. Maybe it’s the memory of Regulus, tugging him so far off-balance he slides off his stool and half sprawls across the bar, inserting himself between Malfoy and the bartender with four rumpled pounds fanned out between his fingers. “The boy’s new,” he says to the bartender. “I’ll see he behaves himself.” 

The Malfoy spawn glares at him, muttering a tight-lipped thanks. Sirius grins. The boy has no idea he’s been clocked, so Sirius lets his magic out a little, just enough for Malfoy to sense it, and watches with pleasure as the boy’s gray eyes blink wide. 

“Sirius Black,” Malfoy says, trying and failing to cover his embarrassment by taking a hasty swallow of his piss-water beer. He makes a terrible face, which Sirius enjoys immensely. 

“What’s a nice member of the Sacred Twenty-eight doing in a nasty Muggle place like this?” Sirius teases. 

Malfoy stares at him for a second, his sunburned face growing a shade more scarlet, and then simply turns away, gulping his beer. 

Good—the sooner the Carling is gone the sooner Sirius can buy him something decent; a Moser’s Dunkel or a Spinnaker. While Malfoy stares fixedly at the various scenes unfolding in the rear of the club, Sirius studies him. The poor boy must have been absent the day Flitwick taught sunscreen charms, for every visible inch of his skin, including the insides of his wrists, are burned to an angry scarlet. 

Despite himself, Sirius begins to feel a bit sorry for the kid. Perhaps Sirius should help him get his footing before he goes toddling out into the middle of a whipping scene and catches it in the face. 

“Malfoy.” Sirius waits until the boy drags his eyes away from the admittedly engaging spectacle of a very tall girl with a shaved head getting cuffed to a St. Andrew’s cross. “What brings you to the Realm?”

Malfoy’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline as he tries his best to look offended at the question while deciding whether he’s being hit on or not.

Sirius waits, enjoying the struggle.

“Never mind,” Malfoy says primly, deciding wrong. 

It takes Sirius considerable restraint to avoid rolling his eyes. “I’m not asking you to play,” he assures him. “But if you tell me what you’re looking for, I’ll help you find your way to it.”

“I can manage fine on my own, thanks.” 

It’s hard to look supercilious with a sunburn, and Sirius has to give Malfoy credit for almost succeeding. He nods at Malfoy’s awful pleather collar and fake padlock. “Well, if you’re looking for a Dom, you should take that toy thing off. From a distance, it makes you look taken, and up close it makes you look like you’re slumming.” 

Draco glares at him. “Think you know everything, do you?” 

“I know you’ve never ordered a drink in a Muggle pub before, let alone been inside a kink club.” 

Malfoy hops off the stool as if he’s going to stalk off, but once he’s taken a few steps, he seems to realize that he’s heading toward the dungeon, not the dance floor. He hesitates and, clearly losing his nerve, turns back to Sirius. 

“I’m here for the same reason you are,” he says. 

“Because the kit here is better than at Incarcerous?” Sirius isn’t about to admit the real reason he comes here instead of the wizarding BDSM club. He hasn’t been back there since Remus took up with Tonks. Without Remus to steady him, Sirius is afraid that Incarcerous, with its mixture of high levels of magic and extreme emotions, will trigger an Azkaban flashback. It happened once before. Here at the Realm the scene’s much lighter; not only is there no magic, there’s an active dance floor that lightens the energy in the place. So Sirius comes to the Realm. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” says Malfoy archly. “I’m only here in a Muggle club—” Sirius notices he omits the word “kink” from his description— “because I don’t want the whole wizarding world to see me. _Obviously_. I’m in enough trouble already.” 

Sirius remembers dimly that the Malfoys have been disgraced; something about how, in exchange for staying out of Azkaban, Lucius Malfoy surrendered much of his estate to some Ministry fund for war reparations—or rather, Lucius Malfoy bought his way out of jail. Still, the little Malfoy spawn doesn’t seem an entirely bad sort, though Sirius is sure his manners would definitely improve with a good paddling. 

“So any Muggle club would have done for you, then?” Sirius knows he’s being a bit of a bastard.

“Right now I’m in _this_ club,” Malfoy says, the irritation rising in his voice. “Now lay off. I didn’t ask you to talk to me.” 

“I’m sorry,” Sirius says quickly, because if the kid leaves in a huff Sirius is right back where he was five minutes ago, at the mercy of his thoughts. And besides, despite his overwhelming urge to tease Lucius Malfoy’s wayward son, Sirius also feels some obligation to show him the ropes, as it were. Dropping the bantering tone he says, “If you want to get on here, you ought to know a few things.”

“Such as?” Malfoy’s arms are crossed tightly over his chest.

“For starters, that cheap vinyl collar you’re wearing makes you look like you only came to gawk, like you put it on just to get past the bouncer. Which you didn’t need to—your looks alone would have got you in, though your jeans are wrong, and I’d suggest you brush up on your sunscreen charms the next time you decide to holiday on the Riviera. Getting whipped with a sunburn like that is not a good idea, no matter how much of a pain slut you are.” 

“I didn’t come to be whipped,” Malfoy says through tight lips, “and I wasn’t on the bloody Riviera.” He takes another swallow of his beer and says almost under his breath, “You of all people ought to know what this is.” 

It takes Sirius longer than it should to connect the dots. When he does understand, he feels hot all over, his body remembering the curse as if traces of it are still in his veins. Malfoy’s scarlet color isn’t from sunburn at all. 

“You’ve been burned off your family’s tapestry,” Sirius says slowly. 

“Well done, ten points to Gryffindor.” Draco looks away, as if the subject is so trifling it’s not worth a direct gaze. “I can’t very well go out in Wizarding Society looking like a lobster,” he informs the bar’s rather sticky floor. "I’ve been hiding out in Muggle places since it happened.”

“Most wizards have no idea the curse colors you,” Sirius says. “Wizarding Society won’t think anything more than that you went on holiday and your sunscreen charms failed. Even I thought that, and I’ve had it done to me.” 

Malfoy looks up at him. “You really didn’t know?” 

“I didn’t know.” 

“Then am I to assume this meeting wasn’t planned?”

“Planned? How do you mean?” 

“You haven’t cornered me for the express purpose of introducing me to a, I don’t know, a secret society of exiles from the Sacred Twenty-Eight? Please tell me you have, and that there are more of us, and that we’re all dirty little queers with dirty little kinks. My social life would be ever so much more dynamic.”

The harsh words are spoken with such venom that Sirius finds he has no response. At last he says, feeling for words like a man in a dark room feels for a light switch, “Did all this happen just today?”

Malfoy is silent for a moment. “Yesterday.” 

“Where are you staying?” 

The beginnings of a shrug, then: “With friends.” 

“Some friends they are, letting you come out to the Realm without knowing a Carling from a cat-o-nine-tails,” Sirius says, but Malfoy's too clueless, or perhaps too miserable, to respond to this admittedly poor attempt at humor. He tries a different tack. “Is that what got you burned off? Being a… a dirty little queer, as you put it? And with a kink streak to boot?” 

“Of course not. I got burned off for breaking my engagement.”

“Just that?” Sirius is too surprised to hide it. “That seems impulsive even for Lucius.” 

“I don’t think he meant to do it,” Malfoy says quickly. “Not really. He only meant to threaten me, because when it came time to put my hand to the engagement vow, I couldn't do it. He knows about me, not about this, obviously—” Draco gestures vaguely at the dungeon on the other side of the archway— “but about the queer part. He’s known that for years. He told me he didn’t care who I messed about with as long as I produced an heir. But when it came time to make the Bond, I couldn’t do it. Not now. I’m not going to wreck my life even more, and that poor girl’s life too, not if we’re going to be social pariahs anyway—and we are, despite what Father thinks." Malfoy shakes his head, as if trying to shake off the memory. "So he ordered me to put my hand to the Bond, and I—I told him there was no point, there wasn’t anything left of the Malfoy name or estates worth being heir _to,_ thanks to him. He said if that was what I thought he’d burn me out of the family right then, and he got his wand out and held it right up against the family Tapestry. I guess he thought I’d beg him not to. But I didn’t, and then it was done. And my father’s never been one to recant a decision, no matter how bad, because it makes him look weak. So here we are.” Malfoy takes another swallow of his terrible beer. “And I’ve never been one to stop people from doing the wrong thing. Especially not myself.” 

Sirius nods, understanding that Malfoy is referring to more than this particular incident, but unsure what. He tries to recall the complex interstices of the war, but his brain refuses, supplying instead a vivid memory of the night he himself was burned off. In his nose is the scent of smoking candle wax, the mustiness of the Library walls, and then, just beneath his skin, he feels the Burning, as if fire had been injected straight into his veins the moment his father set the tip of his wand to the fine strands of silk that wove his name. He’d fallen to the floor the moment his mother’s restraining spell broke, doubled over in pain as the curse flared through him. When the flame had eaten away the last threads of his name he was able to stand again, and with his blood still on fire he ran out of the house and Apparated to James’s. It was the middle of the night but James had come down at once. He’d brought Sirius inside and fed him firewhisky until Sirius’s heart broke open and he wept tears of humiliation and rage and made himself sick with crying, but still the burning wouldn’t stop. At last James led Sirius upstairs and told him to get into bed beside him, where he held him tight under the covers and let Sirius blubber on his shoulder and promised they were brothers forever. When Sirius woke in the morning with his face stuck to James’s pillow, the burning in his veins had subsided. And thanks to James, Sirius’s heart was already beginning the long process of knitting itself back together where his parents had torn it.

“What do your friends say?” he asks Malfoy, trying to find his way out of the thicket of his memories. The throb of House music pounds through him like someone else’s heartbeat. He breathes in the stink of stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer and feels it anchor him back to the present moment, where Lucius Malfoy’s only child is jiggling his foot on the barstool rung, looking at the floor and yanking absently at his shirt sleeves—flapping them, Sirius realizes, because his skin must still be feeling the curse’s burn.

“I haven’t told my friends,” Malfoy says quietly. “I want to keep it from the papers as long as possible. When people find out I’ve lost my name as well as everything else, well—I’ll be lucky if I can walk down Diagon Alley without being spit on. If I were allowed to leave the country, I’d be long gone.” 

Draco Malfoy is the boy Sirius would have been, he realizes, were it not for James and Remus and even Peter. His heart lurches uncomfortably, tangling something in his stomach and throat and dick all at once. He’s not exactly sure what he ought to do with this little Malfoy, but he is very sure that he owes the boy comfort of whatever sort he’d like, and he’s also sure that such comfort can’t be given in this club. Not to mention that whatever Malfoy thinks he’s doing here in the Realm in his silly pleather collar and fussy jeans, the fact is that a newbie in a fragile emotional state is in no shape for pickup play. He looks on the verge of tears, and his hands, gripping the pint glass, are trembling. 

“Come back to mine,” Sirius says. “I have better booze and better music.” And then, lest his motives be misunderstood he adds, “I have a spare room you’re welcome to stay in until you get sorted.” 

Malfoy agrees at once, which Sirius didn’t expect. The boy pushes away the rest of his Carling and stands expectantly before Sirius as if he trusts him. And isn’t this a charming irony, Sirius Black offering a spare bed to a disowned Pureblood who is none other than the son of their sworn enemy from school days? Oh, if James were alive—

And Remus—

And Regulus —

And _Padfoot_—

Somehow it’s that last one hurts the most, enough to make him stop walking for a second, halfway past the lavatories. He pushes the ache back down, deep down below the place in his chest where it’s trying to crawl out and leads Malfoy out the club’s back exit. There’s a convenient Apparition point behind one of the skips. 

~o~

Sirius installs Malfoy on the couch with a shot of Ogden’s in a snifter as big as his head. Malfoy rolls the glass in his hand, watching the gold legs of the whisky trickle down the sides of the glass, then bows his head over the bowl to inhale the fumes. Every inch of him To The Manor Born. Malfoy sips, nods briefly but appreciatively, and looks marginally better. Then he sets down his glass and fidgets as if his clothes itch, tugging at the hem of his shirt. 

“Your skin still feels like it’s on fire, then?” Sirius asks.

Malfoy drops his hand as quickly if he’d been caught picking his nose. “When will it stop?” he asks, looking up at Sirius with such clear misery on his face that Sirius has an urge to gather the boy into his arms. 

“Mine was gone by the next morning,” he says. “So yours should dissipate any minute now.”

To Sirius’s surprise, Malfoy’s miserable expression shifts into something approaching panic. “It’s already been a week.” 

“But you told me it happened yester—”

“I lied, all right? _Merlin._ I’ve been sleeping in a Muggle youth hotel, if you must know.” He tugs frantically at the hem of his shirt, flapping it back and forth so he can cool his stomach without actually exposing any flesh. “Why is it taking so long for the burning to stop? What did you do to make it go away?”

“Me? I got drunk and cried in my friend’s arms all night.” As Sirius speaks it dawns on him that perhaps James’s all-night embrace was the antidote not only to his heartache, but to the curse itself. “Come on then,” he says, stretching out one arm across the back of the couch. He expects Malfoy to tense up and say something cutting, but to his surprise, Malfoy scoots toward him at once and lays his head on Sirius’s shoulder. His face is hot as if he’s got a fever. He doesn’t cry, but Sirius can feel the boy’s whole body is tense with the effort of holding back tears. He puts his arms around Malfoy and strokes his hair, which slides over Sirius’s fingers as silky and fine as a child’s. 

“It's all right, little dragon,” he says. “Let Daddy make it better.” 

Malfoy breaks then, and Sirius sits quietly and holds him, feeling his shoulder grow wet. They stay in this position for nearly an hour, Malfoy crying softly and Sirius petting him, and toward the end of it Sirius feels Malfoy’s body begin to cool and then relax as the spell leaves him, dissolving from the presence of Sirius’s arms. 

At last Malfoy raises his head. His nose is bright red from crying, but the rest of his face is back to its usual family pallor. Traces of the spell linger only on his neck, around that terrible collar, in the form of splotchy pink welts that look like hives. 

“How did you know?” Malfoy asks. 

“To hold you? Because it worked for me,” Sirius says. “My best mate kept his arms around me all night and the curse dissipated.”

“No, I meant—you know.” Malfoy looks away. “The Daddy bit,” he says huskily. “Are you a Legilimens?” 

Sirius blinks. So that’s what Malfoy was looking for at the Realm. This is an interesting development.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Malfoy ploughs on, unaware of his error. He narrows his eyes at Sirius, in a pathetic attempt at looking threatening. “You’d better not tell anyone. Undeclared Legilimency is illegal, I could have you arres—”

“I’m not a Legilimens, Malfoy. I didn’t know until you just told me.”

Malfoy gapes, then hops off the sofa so quickly he trips over his own feet. He fumbles for his wand, then seems to think better of Apparating and starts for the Floo instead. 

Sirius lets him get halfway to the fireplace before he speaks. 

_“Draco.”_

Malfoy stops. Sirius resists the urge to crow. 

“Look at me, Draco.”

Malfoy turns, unsure if he’s coming or going. His face flushes all over again, but it’s not dark magic this time. Just shame, fresh and common as a garden rose. And as lovely as a garden rose, Sirius thinks, watching the poor boy’s cheeks stain themselves dark pink. 

“Thanks for the drink,” Malfoy says, with a valiant attempt at salvaging some self-possession, "and for—” he gestures vaguely toward where he just spent the past hour curled in Sirius’s arms. “Whatever that was.” 

“You’re most welcome.” Very slowly, as if Malfoy were a wild animal, Sirius moves his arm and pats the couch beside him. “Don’t run off. That is, if you’d like—” Sirius suddenly finds himself a bit breathless. “Daddy would like it if you sat back down.” 

For a moment the room is absolutely still. Then, moving as if in a dream, slowly but without hesitation, Draco recrosses the room and sinks down into the couch, burying his long arms between his knees and putting his head in his hands. Sirius waits, very aware of his own breath. Of the coolness of the room. Of the pale blond hairs at the back of Draco’s neck, curling damply against his skin above the awful collar. Sirius breathes deeply, desire blooming inside him. Oh, how he wants to take Draco’s shamed face gently between his palms, and lift Draco’s head until the boy must look at him. Sirius wants to hold Draco's face in his hands until the rosy bud of his shame is forced to bloom. He wants to breathe in the sweetness of it, touching its unfurling petals with the tips of his fingers, burying his face in the ache of its scent. He wants to breathe in Draco’s shame until he can taste it with every cell of his body. And then, finally, he wants to blow gently against the opened blossom until its perfume is dispersed for good.

Sirius lays his hand lightly on the back of Draco’s neck. Feels those fine hairs raise up at his touch, feels Draco take a long, shuddering breath. “Were you hoping to find a daddy at the club?” Sirius asks, very quiet. 

“Thought you’d already seen inside my mind.” 

“I told you, I’m not a Legilimens.” _Or a bloody Animagus,_ a voice in Sirius’s head adds viciously. Sirius tries to ignore it in favor of stroking Draco’s neck. “But I could be a daddy.” 

Draco’s whole body ripples and…engages. Like a luffing sail suddenly pulled taut and filling with wind. He raises his head, and Sirius reads there the sharp, contained Slytherin pride he knows so well, but it’s warring with something hungry and naked and full of need and god, he’s lovely. Sirius feels his own internal anger at himself subside as he contemplates Draco. Merlin, Sirius wants to _eat_ him.

He’s never tried being anyone’s daddy before. He’s always imagined, without really thinking about it, that daddies are all big, solid men, with broad chests and rich baritone voices and plenty of flesh and muscle. Whereas Sirius still looks just this side of emaciated, even with Azkaban five years behind him. But he knows all about taking care of people—or trying to, anyway. He can feel the urge gathering deep in every rooted place inside him, his chest and cock and belly. He wants to do this for Draco, with Draco, _to_ Draco. But he doesn’t want to push too hard, not when they’ve only just met and Draco in such a state. So he only says, warmly but without too much heat, “If you’re ever interested, this daddy would like to play with you.”

Draco’s pale face flushes deeper, the pink creeping all the way back to his ears. He draws his mouth into a knot and fidgets his fingers and god, his shame is _delicious_. Sirius wants to hold him down and lick him all over. Draco darts a quick glance at Sirius’s face, his gray eyes wide with a look that’s truly beseeching, but he can’t seem to find the words he wants. He presses his lips together and looks at the floor. 

“Draco.” Sirius reaches out and touches the back of Draco’s nervous hand. Draco jumps, his eyes wide and dark, and Sirius presses his hand and lets his magic take over, flowing around Draco, holding him the way Sirius’s arms held him earlier. He can sense, rather than feel, Draco’s racing heart, fast as a small, frightened animal. “Is that what you want? To tell me what you were looking for at the Realm? To tell Daddy all about it?” 

He’s watching Draco’s face very carefully, but he could have spotted from all the way across the Dance floor of the Realm the way Draco’s whole body tenses, lists ever so slightly toward Sirius, as if suddenly magnetized. 

“I—” Draco says. “It’s—you’ll think I’m disgusting.”

_Interesting_. Boot worship? Piss? Auto-asphyxiation? Something more outré? Who knows what Draco’s idea of ‘disgusting’ might encompass? Sirius decides to go for it. “Little Dragon,” he says, curling his fingers around Draco's slightly clammy palm. “Good boys don’t keep secrets from their Daddies. Tell me about it.”

“For god’s sake, can’t you just fuck me?” 

Sirius is so startled he jerks his hand away. 

“I mean, isn’t that why we’re both here?” Draco’s eyes narrow. “Sure, you were quite the gentleman earlier, letting me throw a wobbly on your shoulder, but I thought we were going to fuck or something. That’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it?”

“I brought you here to get you out of that club and give you a chance to talk. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.” 

“And who says I don’t want to?”

Godric’s balls, Sirius had forgotten how difficult Slytherins are. Draco Malfoy’s not a dragon, he’s a bloody hermit crab—retreating into his little shell the moment he gets anxious, and snapping his outsized claw at anything he’s offered, just to see if he can break it in two. 

Sirius takes a deep breath. “I’m going to ask you a question,” he says, speaking as slowly and deliberately as if talking to a tantruming child, which is what he’s starting to feel like he’s got on his sofa. “And I want you to think very carefully before answering.”

“Well?” From deep inside the crab shell.

“I can put you to bed in the spare room right now, and you can sleep as long as you like, and in the morning I’ll make you a proper fry-up. I won’t lay a finger on you, and you’re welcome to crash here indefinitely, provided you can act like a grown up most of the time instead of a sulky twelve-year old.” 

“That’s not a ques—”

“I’m not finished. Or we can stay here on the sofa, and do what I think you really want to do, which is let me be your daddy and make you tell me all the big, bad kinks you’re carrying around that make you think you’re a ‘dirty queer,’ as you put it. And if we end up exploring some of them, I’m more than game. But the one thing I’m not going to do, Malfoy, is be your quick trick. I know perfectly well you’re thinking you’ll distract yourself with sex so you don’t have to feel anything at all except your arse getting pounded, and you’re hoping not to have to say anything either, and then after you’ll slink out of here feeling an even worse piece of shit than you do now.” 

Malfoy appears stunned into silence for a moment. Then: “Bloody fucking Gryffindors. Every last one of you.” 

_Snap goes the little claw,_ thinks Sirius. Aloud he says, “So here’s the question. Don’t answer until you’re sure. Would you like to leave, or go to bed in the spare room, or stay here on the sofa and talk to me?”

He watches Draco’s eyes dart around the room. To the floo, to the short hallway with three closed doors. To the bank of windows opposite the sofa. Back to Sirius again. Then to the floor. “I’ll stay here,” he says, addressing his feet as if they might get up and leave of their own accord. 

“To sleep? Or to talk?”

“To talk. With—with you, Daddy,” Draco finishes in a strangled voice, looking up at last. 

Sirius awards himself one hundred points to Gryffindor and pours them both another splash of Ogden’s. 

“So," he says, settling back into the sofa. “Tell me about the collar.” 

“You were right,” Draco says quickly, downing his Ogden’s in a single gulp. “I bought it for a pound in a novelty shop, because I’d heard the doorman at the Realm wouldn’t let me in if I was in plain street clothes. But I didn’t know where to get Muggle kink things, and I couldn’t very well march into Marks and Morgana’s and ask to try on a pair of dragonhide chats, or whatever you lot call them.”

In an extreme display of patience on his part, Sirius refrains from pointing out that it’s chaps, and that “you lot” is in fact a group Draco is attempting to be part of. Sirius doesn’t say anything, but reaches out to finger the nasty strip of pleather around Draco’s neck. One side of the snap simply separates from the collar entirely when Sirius tugs at the D-ring, the entire vinyl mess falling limply into his hands. Sirius throws it across the room. 

“Are you a submissive?” he asks. 

Draco’s pale cheeks color again as he looks away. “I—don’t know. The thing—the things I—like, I mean—Oh, for Merlin and god’s sake, help me, _touch_ me at least, won't you?”

“Are you saying you want to play?”

“What, do I need to send you an engraved invitation? Merlin, I don’t understand you lot at _all,_ it’s like—”

“All right. If you want me to stop, you need to say, ‘stop now.’ Otherwise I’m going to push you. But you can stop any time, Draco.”

“Fine, now can we just—just do it?” 

Sirius puts the tips of his fingers on Draco’s neck where the collar had lain, and moves his hand slowly over Draco’s throat. Draco rewards him for this attention by complaining, “Why are you such a bastard?” 

“That’s not how good boys talk to their daddies,” Sirius says sternly, taking away his hand. 

Judging by the toss of his head, Draco may have intended to roll his eyes at that. But what actually happens is that his eyes seem to snag on Sirius’s face. Sirius fixes him with the Look, which he suddenly remembers how to do, and a noise very close to a whimper sneaks out of Draco’s mouth like a mouse out of a drawer. 

“Good boys have to ask nicely for what they want,” Sirius says, feeling himself beginning to get hard. It’s the whimper that did it. 

“Please touch me,” Draco says, low and halting. “I want you to touch me, Daddy.” 

“Touch you here?” Sirius asks, skating his hand over Draco’s shoulders, and god, he really is a bastard, isn’t he?

Draco shakes his head no. 

“Here?” Sirius fingers the buttons on Draco’s shirt. Draco flinches a little, and Sirius takes away his hand. 

“Touch—touch my, my jeans.” 

Merlin, the kid can’t even say ‘dick.’ Sirius puts his hand on Draco’s thigh, then takes pity on him and moves it a little higher until his thumb comes to rest in the crease of denim at his groin.

“Are you hard, Draco?”

Draco turns his head away and closes his eyes. “Yes.” In a whisper. 

“Daddy wants you to show him. Daddy wants you to sit in his lap and let him open your jeans.” 

Draco closes his eyes and stands up, immediately plunking himself down across Sirius’s thighs, his cheeks blooming with a flush of heat that Sirius feels right in his cock. He runs his hands over Draco’s long denim-sheathed shanks, up under his black button-down shirt to undo his belt, which, Sirius notes with some amusement, is goblin-worked silver. So much for going native. He drops the belt on the floor and slips two fingers just under the waistband of Draco’s jeans, which, beltless, hang loose on his skinny hips. Sirius is fucking _hard._ Draco squirms in his lap, giving a little warble of need as Sirius undoes his flies, wriggling easily out of his jeans until they’re down around his calves and he’s sitting across Sirius’s lap in his pants, his arousal hidden by his shirt-tails. But not for long. Sirius slips his hand under the fabric and feels the lovely hard line of Draco’s erection, young and hungry behind the his briefs. 

“You _are_ hard,” Sirius agrees, rocking his hips to nudge his own erection up against Draco’s arse. “Just like Daddy. Now pull down your pants. Daddy wants you to show him.” Draco raises himself up just a few inches off Sirus’s lap to pull down his briefs, bending awkwardly over as they get tangled up in the jeans around his ankles. Then he's settling his naked arse on Sirius's lap, his exposed cock jutting up hard and trembling from a nest of gold fur. 

It’s lovely. He’s lovely. Sirius tucks a strand of pale hair behind Draco’s blushing ear and says gently, “Now that we can see you properly, tell Daddy where you want him to touch you.” 

“Touch my dick,” Draco says in a strangled voice. Sirius wraps his hand around the hot length, smooth and dry as silk, and doesn’t stroke. Draco’s hips jerk. 

“That’s the way,” Sirius says soothingly. “That’s a boy.” He gives a gentle squeeze and says in Draco’s ear, “Now I’m going to ask you again. You didn’t want to tell me what you were looking for at the Realm unless I was touching you.” He shifts a little, drawing Draco closer, feeling the wings of Draco’s bony shoulder blades through his shirt. He seems so fragile, a captured bird. And Sirius is going to take care of him. Oh, yes, Sirius will take good care of him. Wordlessly, wandlessly, he casts _Lubrico_ in the palm of his hand and begins stroking that hard silky shaft, so slowly. Draco makes that mouse-whimper again and leans sideways against Sirius, his hair falling over his tightly-shut eyes. 

“Daddy’s touching you now, Draco. So you need to tell Daddy what it is you like.” 

Draco swears under his breath.

“That’s not how good boys talk,” Sirius admonishes. “Daddy needs you to speak nicely. And tell him the truth.” He strokes too slowly on purpose, pausing each time his hand returns to the base of Draco’s cock. “Who told you that what you like is disgusting?” If Draco says his parents, Sirius will happily kill both of them.

“I—I just, oh god, it just is, all right? I’m sick, I know, but don’t make me say it.” As he speaks, his cock strains in Sirius’s hand. 

Bestiality? Scat? Death-Eater fantasies? Draco’s face is dusky pink with shame and arousal, though not quite back to the color of the Burn. Sirius lays cool fingers against Draco’s hot cheek. “You like it but it makes you feel dirty,” he says.

Draco nods. 

Sirius strokes his cheek, strokes his cock. “Is that what gets you off? That it’s dirty?”

“I don’t know.” Draco’s pale eyelashes turn a shade darker, a few unshed tears staining the fine hairs. 

Sirius remembers the way Remus cried when they told him they knew his secret. And how Sirius wanted to take thirteen-year-old Remus into his arms with a fierce protective passion that he couldn’t put a name to, though he already knew he wanted Remus for his own. To protect him, to care for him. Like this. But Remus would never let him. Not in the way Sirius wanted. Not all the way.

“Daddy wants your secrets, little Dragon,” Sirius says, because something inside him is burning now as well, something that needs Draco’s tears to soothe and cool it. “Daddy wants your shame just like he wants your pleasure.” 

“Oh. _God_—” 

“Daddy wants all of you. Your sweat and your come and your tears, too. So Daddy’s going to make you cry.” 

Draco’s body gives a little involuntary jerk. He’s beginning to pant.

“Daddy wants you to tell him just how dirty you are. You’re going to look Daddy in the eyes and tell him your secret.”

“Please don’t make me.” Draco is trembling, lightly, all over. 

“Does that mean you want to stop?”

“No, just—just—god, just _help_ me.” Draco twists in Sirius’s lap, nudging into him, squirming as if simultaneously trying to get closer and move away, and Sirius with his free hand reaches between Draco’s legs and rolls his balls, high and tight against his body, swollen, wanting. 

“Be still and look at me, Draco.” 

Draco does. Their faces are so close they’re breathing the same whiskey-scented air. Sirius reaches back between Draco’s legs and strokes Draco’s hole, a lubrication spell on the tips of his fingers.

“I know you like to be fucked,” he says. “Right here, in this tight little hole that everyone taught you was so dirty. But you know dirty things are for pleasure, don’t you?” Draco’s panting, his breath coming in quick gasps of arousal. Sirius presses gently against Draco’s arsehole, the tip of his finger slipping inside. “Look at me and tell me now.”

“I—” 

“Tell me how you’ve been pleasuring yourself, you dirty boy. Tell Daddy right now.”

“I like getting pissed on.” The tears well up first on the rim of Draco’s left eyelid. A second later, they fill the right eye as well, hot and glistening, and their heat goes straight down Sirius’s chest to his cock. 

From deep inside that connection Sirius is concentrating as he can only in top space, feeling into Draco, sensing by touch and breath and magic and perhaps even the rate at which Draco’s eyes are filling with tears, that Draco’s arousal is tightrope-walking along the wire of his humiliation. With one wrong move on Sirius's part, Draco will fall. 

“That’s right,” he says, as firmly, as gently, as precisely as he can, and feels for a moment as if he _is_ a Legilimens, for he can sense the instant the words take root in Draco’s mind. He presses a chaste kiss to Draco’s forehead, a balancing energy against the fact that he’s got one hand wrapped around Draco’s cock and the other in his arse crack with a finger up his hole. “Tell Daddy all about the piss.” 

“I lie down in the tub with all my clothes on. And I—I piss on myself.” The tears overflow both eyes at once and trickle down Draco’s flushed cheeks, his hard-on wilting in Sirius’s hand as the shame overcomes him. 

Without letting go of Draco’s flagging cock, Sirius pulls his forearm tight around Draco’s waist, holding him close.

“Tell Daddy,” he repeats. “My good boy.” He kisses the side of Draco’s face, tasting the lovely aching sting of those hot tears. “You’re so good to cry for me. Now tell me how it feels, lying there in your bathtub, hot and wet and covered in your own piss. You’re safe in Daddy’s lap. Tell me how it feels.” 

“I—wank to it,” Draco says haltingly, his eyes closed, his eyelashes matted with tears and his voice hoarse as he struggles to get himself back under control. “I feel—before I do it, like I’m going to die, I’m so ashamed of myself. You don’t understand.” His eyes fly open and there’s a wild look, a dangerous look. Sirius feels Draco’s fear enter his own body and knows something has gone wrong. “I have the Dark Mark,” Draco blurts. 

Sirius feels his hands disconnect themselves from Draco’s body. 

“And I took it,” Draco presses on, his voice rising. “Not because he said he’d torture my parents if I didn’t, nothing like that. I took the Mark to make my father proud of me, do you understand?” Draco scrambles off Sirius’s lap and winds up half-kneeling on the couch, his face contorting as the words tumble out of him. “And then I did what the Dark Lord said to do, and I did it over and over again. People died because of me, and that will never go away no matter what I do, and now—now I’ve been burned off, and it was all for nothing, all of it, I can’t even—all I can do is—piss on myself and then lie there in it and wank. _I’m_ disgusting, do you understand? _I am_. And I can’t bear it, of course I want a mindless fuck so I don’t have to think, you bastard. And if I had the guts I’d give myself what I deserve but I can’t even do that, can I, because I’m too scared, I just, I’m _trapped_, I’m not even a Malfoy anymore but I’m still trapped—” Draco grabs the Ogden’s bottle from the coffee table. “It’s like I’m trapped inside here, and I want to smash my way out, just break myself open, if I could I’d—god help me—” Draco’s hand flashes through the air, slamming the bottle into the glass top of the coffee table. Both table and bottle explode into a cloud of shards, covering the rug in amber liquid and broken glass. 

Draco stares, horrified, at the jagged neck of the bottle in his hand, the broken glass tabletop, the spreading stain of firewhiskey. 

Sirius stares at Draco. 

Draco flings himself down on the sofa and sobs. 

In some distant part of his mind Sirius thinks he ought to say _It’s all right_. But he knows it isn’t all right and so he remains silent. 

“I’m sorry,” Draco sobs into the cushions. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

Sirius does not know what to do. He's had scenes go bad once or twice with Remus, but Sirius was bottoming then, and when he got in over his head Remus had understood exactly how to reel him back. Sirius has no idea how to do that for Draco, who is curled into a ball on the couch, his shoulders are heaving with sobs, his arms wrapped around himself as if he’s utterly alone. And under those black shirtsleeves is the same mark Regulus had. Sirius can’t think clearly. Regulus took the Mark. And yet many years before that, long before Hogwarts, there was a time when Regulus wept and Sirius held him. Sirius is sure there was. There has to have been. But Sirius didn’t get to Regulus in time. He turned away from him and didn’t know that Regulus might have been this boy here. This boy who is alive right here, but dying with remorse. 

Sirius puts his arms around Regulus and holds him, his arms shaking as they receive his brother’s racking gasps. He holds the thin shoulders, the heaving chest, the fragility of the boy buckled in pain. He holds the pain, feeling its shards pierce his own body as his brother cries. His mind empties out. Perhaps some glimmer of Padfoot is still with him, for he is abiding with no agenda besides witness. Sirius feels a surreal sense of calm descend over him, as if all of this is happening very far away. His head feels distant from his body, his hands and feet tingle as if they belong to someone else. Regulus has stopped crying, he realizes, and now he turns in Sirius’s arms and buries his blond head under Sirius’s chin. 

“Daddy,” he snuffles, and with a jolt Sirius is back, the world rearranging itself around him as he realizes that Draco is still with him, has been with him all along. That it was Sirius who left. 

And yet he still can’t say _it’s all right_. So he does the best he can. “Daddy’s here,” he says, stroking Draco’s hair. “Daddy’s here with you.”

And it’s true, Sirius _is_ here. And perhaps that’s enough, because now that he’s fully here again he understands what to do next. 

He reaches for his wand and casts a _Leviosa_, gathering Draco up as if he weighs nothing and carrying him into the bathroom. He steps into the tub and sits down with Draco still in his arms and only then does he let the spell go, Draco settling against him, his body heavy the way everyone is heavier after they’ve cried. 

“Little Dragon,” Sirius says. He kisses his sticky cheeks, his matted eyelashes, and Draco blinks up at him, glassy-eyed and dazed. “Daddy needs you to do something important.”

“Yes Daddy,” Draco says, his voice so trusting that for a moment Sirius feels the terror that is the flip side of such blind faith. _Of course_ this boy did what Lucius Malfoy told him. 

“Daddy needs you to piss,” Sirius says softly. 

Draco just blinks, then nods, but makes no move. 

“Do you need me to show you, baby?” Because Draco is so very young all of a sudden. 

“Yes, Daddy.” Draco doesn’t flush, or look away. 

Sirius helps him sit back in the deep end of the tub, then gets to his knees and unzips. He takes out his cock and breathes, and looks down at Draco, and says, “Let Daddy give this to his boy.” 

He pisses, aiming for Draco’s chest. The black shirt turns darker, plastering itself to Draco’s skin, and Draco’s breath comes audible and trembling, his whole body sliding down in the bathtub to let Sirius mark him. He tilts his head back, exposing his bare throat like an offering. “On my face,” he whispers, his eyes squeezed closed.

Sirius does it, washing away the tears and snot in a stream whose source is a spring deep in Sirius’s body. Sirius pisses on Draco’s collar bones, a tiny gold well forming in the hollow at the base of his throat. He pisses on Draco’s cock, on his balls, and on his thighs, dusted with gold hair. When there’s nothing left, Sirius kneels between Draco’s legs and kisses him gently on the mouth, tasting the heady tang of himself in the corners of Draco’s lips. “Look how dirty you are,” Sirius says, his voice warm and low. “Daddy wants that. Daddy wants all your dirty parts. Your shame. Your Mark. Your terrible failures. Give them to Daddy now. Go ahead and piss on yourself.” 

Draco does. He pisses straight up, a clear fountain. Sirius leans forward into the stream, letting it hit his chest. It’s as clear as water—a pint of Carling does tend to have that effect—but tinged with that unmistakable honey-salt scent that even now, even with Padfoot gone, Sirius still loves with a ferocity of instinct. He tilts his face down, letting Draco’s piss splatter his cheeks, his nose, his lips. In the watery stream Sirius tastes everything: Draco’ shame and arousal, his pain and relief and tears. 

The last few droplets land pale and glistening in the blond thicket of hair at Draco’s groin. Draco’s eyes are still closed, his face taut as if he’s concentrating. 

“Daddy sees you,” Sirius murmurs. “You’re so brave to let me see you like this.” He runs a hand slowly over Draco’s wet legs, letting him feel it, and Draco’s thighs break out in gooseflesh. He trembles beneath Sirius, his eyes closed, deep inside himself and yet so very present.

At last Sirius moves his hands to Draco's face and strokes his cheek. “Daddy’s going to clean you up, now,” he says, and spells Draco’s soaked shirt off to the washbasin, then sends his own wet clothes after them and turns on the taps to the bath. 

The feel of the _Disvesteum_ and the rushing water makes Draco open his eyes. Sirius becomes aware of his own nakedness—his Azkaban scars, the runes he carved into himself in his cell. Draco has got a chestful of scars as well, and there’s the Mark, dark against his pale forearm. Draco's eyes are soft and glassy on him, without judgement or even assessment. “Come here to me now,” Sirius says, opening his arms, and Draco does, legs spidering up over Sirius’s thighs and back behind his waist, long arms wrapping around Sirius’s middle. Draco rests his head damply against Sirius’s sternum, all of him ripe with their combined scents, heady as a thicket of honeysuckle. Sirius holds Draco close as the tub fills, his cheek pressed against Sirius’s chest, their skin growing warm and damp inside the cloud of steam. When the water is up to their waists, Sirius reaches for a flannel and begins to wash Draco’s face. 

Draco submits entirely, like a child on the verge of sleep, pliant but exceedingly heavy in Sirius’s arms. Sirius washes Draco’s back and shoulders, his upper arms, and then the Mark. Then the other forearm. Sirius tries to soap each part exactly the same way. With the Mark behind him, he moves on to soaping Draco’s long legs, the bony knees protruding from the water like two furred islands. Then he wraps soapy fingers tentatively around Draco’s balls. Draco gives a low hum of pleasure so Sirius washes him there too, soaping his crack, the wrinkle of his hole. Then he slides his hand up to Draco’s cock. 

“You like this, Little Dragon?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Draco says, the woozy slur in his voice charged with a quiver of arousal. “Please get me off.” 

Sirius feels his own cock jump to attention under the water, slick against the side of Draco’s thigh. “Daddy likes this so much,” Sirius tells him, wanking Draco slowly, the simple weight of him in Sirius’s arms somehow just as intense as what came before. Because Draco is here, so dependent, so open. So content to be in Sirius’s arms. Right here, moaning in Sirius’s arms, little broken notes of sexual need that fall from his mouth of their own volition, with no intervention on Draco’s part. Draco is giving himself over to Sirius, giving himself over to himself. 

“Such a good boy,” murmurs Sirius. “Giving Daddy everything he asked for.” Draco’s cock under the water is thick in his hand, hard in his hand. A circuit in his hand between Sirius's intention and Draco's pleasure. Sirius wanks him and feels the charge in Draco's body as if it were his own, wanks him and knows just when he's got him to the edge. “Good boys deserve a reward,” Sirius says, watching Draco’s face. 

“Oh—oh, _fuck_—” Draco’s pale eyebrows wrinkle as his mouth goes slack, his hips bucking into Sirius’s stroke, his thighs tensing. 

“Daddy wants your come, too. Come for Daddy.” 

Draco arches back, then curls sharply forward, a long ragged moan of pleasure torn slowly out of him as Sirius stills his hand and Draco spurts into the water, swirls of white dissolving in the slosh of shaking hips. 

“Daddy—oh, god. _Oh_—”

Sirius pulls Draco close against his chest and leans back in the water. “Such a precious boy,” he murmurs, wiping Draco’s wet hair back from his forehead, kissing his damp eyelashes, his cheeks, the tip of his nose. “Such a good boy,” Sirius hums. Draco turns in his arms like a fish and leans back against him, snuggling his head against Sirius’s jaw. “So brave,” Sirius whispers in his ear, and feels Draco shiver in pleasure. “Precious boy,” Sirius continues, mouthing along the back of his neck and feeling the fine hairs rise in tingling response. He keeps on, moving his lips and his fingers all over Draco’s head, praising and grooming, the soft repetitions almost a lullaby, until at last the water begins to get cold and Draco shifts against him.

“Take me to bed, Daddy,” he mumbles, so Sirius casts another _Wingardium_ and a drying charm carries Draco down the hall, past the study with the convertible sofa and into his bedroom. He climbs into the messy bed and settles back against the pillows, only then letting the levitation spell go. The return of Draco’s weight is a relief as it settles heavily against him. 

Draco opens his eyes and gazes up at Sirius. “Thank you,” he says, his voice slow and woozy. He’s still so deeply under, so small. Sirius feels pulled back under as well, into the heart of this fierce desire to protect Draco in this exposed state, to heal every raw and wounded bit of him. The feeling is almost painful in its intensity. He feels flayed open, exposed. On the verge of tears himself, even. Because no one has ever needed him the way he feels needed in this moment by Draco. Utterly, completely.

_Oh, stop,_ he thinks, trying to pull himself out of the post-scene mindset that likes to regard every finger-touch, every flutter of emotion as unique and profound. He _has_ been needed like this before, of course he has. Only he failed at it. Regulus needed him, but Sirius never knew it because by then he’d written Regulus off. And once upon a time Harry—the orphaned one-year-old Harry—had needed Sirius. Sirius knew that need, all right; in every aching hour of Azkaban he knew it. And yes, Sirius knows Harry loves him, wants to spend time with him, considers him family, but Harry is no longer the child Sirius never had the chance to know, and he doesn’t want Sirius to take care of him. It’s too late for that.

And as for Remus—this is the most confounding, for when Remus needed him Sirius was there, with his arms open and his heart in his hands. But Remus would accept what Sirius tried to give only in tiny, measured spoonfuls leveled precisely to Remus’s exact specifications and never a drop more. No matter how close they were, still Remus would not let Sirius all the way in; not when they were sixteen, not when they were thirty-six. 

But Moony had needed Padfoot. 

Padfoot came into being _because_ Moony needed him. Moony had let him in, and now, because Moony is gone, Padfoot has gone too—at least, that is the only way Sirius can make sense of the impossible, unfathomable fact. He wonders, not for the first time, if everyone becomes who they are in the foundry of someone else’s requirements. Harry was needed by Dumbledore to become the savior of Wizarding Britain. He became that man and Sirius lost him in the process. The Malfoys needed Draco to be forever indentured to the promise of their withheld approbation. He did just as they asked, and lost himself. 

And Sirius? What does it say about Sirius that the most satisfying relationship of his life happened while he was a dog? 

Draco shifts against Sirius’s chest, then suddenly raises his head and looks up. 

“Hey, there,” Sirius says, trying to pull himself back together. He doesn’t want to infect Draco’s possibly fragile post-scene state with the tumult of his own major life regrets. 

“Hi,” Draco says. His voice is still woozy with endorphins. He sits up and looks around as if taking his bearings, then smiles, brief and a little sheepish. “I think I’m… back.” 

“How do you feel?”

Draco fishes a pillow out of the messy bedclothes and holds it in his lap, then takes a couple of deep breaths, as if putting Sirius’s question directly to his body. “Good… I think. Yeah.” He transfers the pillow to the headboard and leans against it. “I feel a bit like I’ve smoked too much gillyweed. Everything seems rather…slow.” He looks thoughtfully at Sirius a moment, then drops his eyes. “That was, uh, intense.”

Sirius reaches out to brush a lock of still-damp hair from Draco’s face, letting his hand rest for a moment on the back of Draco’s neck. Draco relaxes into the touch and Sirius feels something inside himself relax a bit as well. 

“It was for me too,” he admits. “You were—” Sirius hesitates, not wanting to frighten Draco off with too much. “You were bloody amazing,” he finishes despite himself, because who is he kidding? Sirius can’t act indifferent any more than Padfoot could have acted a cat. 

“So were you,” Draco says softly. “I didn’t know I could—be like that. That you would—well. You. I mean. Thank you.” And then he’s yawning hugely, as unselfconsciously as a child.

“You should sleep now,” Sirius says. 

“Yes,” Draco agrees. “Can I sleep right here? With you?”

“Of course.” 

Sirius draws the duvet up over both of them, feeling possibly a bit too grateful that Draco wants to sleep beside him. It’s comforting, this warm, lanky body curled beside him, one hand thrown carelessly, yet somehow possessively across Sirius’s chest. And yet Sirius lies sleepless, staring at the empty ceiling. He smokes another clove but it doesn’t help. The bees are buzzing in his chest again, even now.

It’s a long while before he realizes what’s keeping him awake. There’s something he must do. The awareness of it has been standing on the threshold of his consciousness since Draco fell asleep, perhaps even before that, but Sirius is only just now raising his head to its persistent knocking. He will admit it now, along with the understanding that it will hurt, perhaps terribly. But the rightness of it is undeniable. It is correct, almost elegant, as an Arithmancy proof is elegant. Remus, he feels sure, would approve. And this, at least, is soothing. Sirius turns onto his side and beside him Draco turns too, shifting closer in response, snuggling his arse back against Sirius’s thighs. Spooned together in this warmth and darkness, Sirius sleeps. 

~o~

He opens his eyes to a lead-colored dawn and an empty bed, the cold space beside him jerking him fully awake at once. Has Draco panicked and fled? 

Fuck. _Fuck_. Sirius should have warned him about sub drop, should have prepared him for a crash. But Draco had seemed so peaceful last night, so at ease—Sirius throws on a robe and hurries out of the bedroom, wondering where a panicked Draco Malfoy would go at six a.m., then forces himself to walk at a normal pace down the hall because if Draco is still here and simply got up to use the loo or make a cup of tea, Sirius doesn’t want to look like a tit.

Draco is there, but he isn’t in the bathroom or the kitchen. Sirius finds him kneeling on the sitting room rug, absorbed in repairing the shattered glass top of the coffee table. Draco must have been awake for a while, for he’s had time to thoroughly Scourgify his manky clothes—Sirius can smell the freshening charms all the way across the room—and get dressed, and the coffee table is in a curious state of semi-repair, some twenty-odd pieces of glass hovering in the air around Draco like swarm of translucent hummingbirds. Draco is so absorbed in his work that he doesn’t seem to notice Sirius in the doorway. Sirius has never seen anyone mend a shattered object with anything but a single _Reparo_, but Draco is casting the spell over and over, mending one shattered piece at a time, binding it to its neighbor and then, with another whispered _Reparo_, joining the newly-fused piece to another little shard. 

Perhaps this is Draco’s way of calming himself, and Sirius should leave him to it. Perhaps Sirius should simply go back to bed and hope Draco joins him. Instead he says, a bit too loudly, “I’ve never seen anyone repair something that way.” 

Draco startles, but without looking up from his work. After a moment he says, in a voice as cold as an unlit floo, “Please accept my apologies for the damage. I wasn’t myself last night.”

Fuck. And _no_—Draco is _not_ going to get away with that. Sirius comes into the sitting room and sinks down on the couch, drawing his robe around him. _Last night you were more yourself than you’ve ever been,_ he wants to retort, and only barely manages to restrain himself, opting instead for, “How did you learn this technique?”

“I’ve got some experience repairing magical furniture,” is Draco’s curt reply. 

“The coffee table isn’t magic, you know.”

“I’m aware of that, but as I haven’t got any experience repairing Muggle furniture, this will have to do. Don’t worry—it will never shatter again when I’m through with it, not even if you hit it with a Blasting curse.”

“And if I hit it with an Ogden’s bottle?” Sirius never could control his mouth for long. 

Draco’s head whips up and the dozen or so pieces of glass hovering around him all fall to the rug. “I said I was sorry,” he says from behind his teeth. “Do you want me to get on my knees and beg your forgiveness? You probably do, you kinky bastard.” 

So they’re back to hermit crab mode again. Sirius stands up and heads for the kitchen. 

“Where are you going?” Draco demands. 

“To find a spare latchkey to give you so that after you throw a fit and storm out of here, you’ll have a way to get back in when I’m not home.” 

That does the trick. Draco gapes at him like a man who, expecting to throw a knife, has suddenly found himself gripping only a bunch of daisies. He covers well, turning back to his pieces of broken glass to hide his bewilderment. 

“Earl Grey or Irish Breakfast?” Sirius calls from the kitchen.

A longish pause; then, rather chastened: “Earl Grey, please.”

By the time the eggs and tomatoes and tea are ready, Draco seems to have decided on a course of action. Over a plate of breakfast he only picks at, he says to Sirius, “I want you to know, last night was just a fluke. I don’t know why I told you all those things. I mean, I’m not really like that. It’s the stress of being burned off, you know what that’s like. I was out of my head.”

Oh, the poor boy. “All right,” Sirius says aloud, and forces himself to wait. If he pushes, it’s too likely he’ll push in the wrong direction. 

“It’s like, like that was someone else last night.”

“All right.” 

“Why don’t you believe me?" Draco snaps, as if Sirius had contradicted him. "You think everyone’s like you? Well, they’re not.”

“I’ve had a number of mistaken beliefs in my time, but thinking that everyone’s like me isn’t one of them. Here.” Sirius pushes the latchkey across the table toward Draco. “You’re free to come and go as you like.”

Droco looks at the key as if it might bite him—which, Sirius recalls, old Pureblood keys sometimes do when touched by anyone other than their owners. “Don’t worry, it’s purely Muggle,” he says. “Go on, take it.” 

Draco does, saying, “So you don’t care whether I’m here or not.” 

Sirius closes his eyes to avoid rolling them at the ceiling. When he’s sure he’s got his Patient voice well in place he says, “If you recall, the one condition I set on your staying here was that you don’t act like a sulky twelve-year-old. If your story is that last night was a fluke for you, and you have no interest in ever doing anything like that again, with me or anyone else—that’s fine with me.” An outright lie, but Draco’s probably too distraught to catch it. “You’re still welcome to stay here.” That, at least, is the truth. “And if you like, I’ll introduce you to my barristers.”

“Your barristers? What for?” Draco’s posture suddenly snaps to attention. Interesting. He may be too freaked out to talk about his love for being pissed on and calling Sirius ‘Daddy,’ but the practicalities of financial management are definitely still in his wheelhouse.

Sirius helps himself to more grilled tomatoes. “Because it’s possible that even though you’ve been burned off the tapestry, you still have some claim on Malfoy Manor.”

“How do you figure?”

“In my case, Grimmauld Place still accepted me as its heir because the Family magic spelled into the structure is so old it preceded the weaving of the tapestry, even though the building itself is newer. If it’s the same with Malfoy Manor, you may still have title to some of it. But you’ll need to know the access spells, and it’s unlikely the Malfoy family solicitors will let you have them now. Aurora Prewitt’s a first rate Magical Historian _and_ a top-notch barrister. She’ll help you find a workaround. I can take you round and introduce you to her on Monday.” 

Draco stares at him, looking as uncomprehending as if Sirius had switched into Parseltongue.

“Sorry,” Sirius says. “Shall I break that down a bit? It’s a lot to take in.”

“I took it in,” Draco says, his eyes focused on something visible only to himself. Visions of family heirlooms, perhaps? “It’s just—” he looks directly at Sirius for the first time all morning, bewilderment like a veil over his features. “Why are you doing this for me?”

He looks so confounded, so lost, that Sirius wants to go right around the table and put his arms around the boy. But he forces himself to stay in his seat and choose the answer least likely to make Draco bolt. 

“I’m doing it for you because someone did it for me once,” he says. But as the words leave his mouth he realizes he can’t stop there. That even if Draco does bolt, he should at least bolt knowing the truth. “And because I want to,” Sirius adds. “To do it for you, that is. You specifically. Because you’ve given me a gift.” 

“What? The repair of a table I smashed myself?”

Sirius stands up and carries the teapot over to the stove under pretext of refilling it. He isn’t sure if he’s sparing Draco the eye contact, or if he’s shielding himself from the rejection he’s afraid he’ll encounter on Draco’s face. “Last night in the bar,” he begins, gazing steadily at the kitchen tap, “you said that I, of all people, ought to understand what had happened to you. I do understand, and not only about the burn. What we did last night—” He hesitates, trying to squeeze his feelings into some sort of vaguely appropriate container. “That wasn’t something I do every weekend. Yeah, I pick up men for scenes now and again. I like bending blokes over and spanking them and fucking them after. I like pissing on people and I like getting pissed on, and it’s all sexy dirty fun. But last night—” And here Sirius finds himself once again on the verge of saying too much. He takes a breath, bracing his hands on the counter to keep from turning around, and tries to choose his words carefully. 

It doesn’t work. “Last night was the most precious night I’ve had with anyone in ages,” he blurts, and now he’s torn it, but he can’t stop. “Last night let me be someone I haven’t been for—for years.” He turns on the kitchen tap and pours himself a glass of water to keep from adding _maybe not ever._ He drinks the water without noticing it and remembers that this is about Draco. The thought steadies him, and he sets down the glass and continues. “You say the person you were last night wasn’t really you, Malfoy. All right. But the person _I_ was last night, he’s someone I’ve wanted to be for a very long time. So will you please tell whoever-it-was I was with that I’m grateful to him for giving me that. And tell him—tell him he’s lovely, and good, and fantastically brave. And that I’m proud of him.”

Sirius turns around. Draco is hunched over his plate, his head bowed. 

Very slowly, Sirius crosses the room and stands beside him. After a moment, Draco tilts sideways out of the chair until his head comes to rest against Sirius’s stomach. 

Sirius puts his arm around Draco’s shoulders and feels they are trembling. 

“Please let me stay with you,” Draco says, very muffled. “I can’t bear to be so alone.” 

“You’re not alone, Draco. I’m here too.” 

Draco sniffles, wiping roughly at his eyes. 

“Will you let me give you something to prove it?” Sirius asks.

“To prove I’m not alone?” Draco raises his tear-stained face to Sirius's. 

“Yes. Hang on a tick.” Sirius goes down the hall to his bedroom and opens the drawer of his nightstand. Before last night, keeping Padfoot’s collar at his bedside had seemed maudlin, desperate even. But last night he realized he has needed it there, close by, in order to have it ready to give away at the proper time. 

Which is now. 

“In case you want to go back to the Realm,” Sirius says, coming back into the kitchen, “either with me or on your own, I think you should have this.” 

He holds out the collar. The leather is thick and soft with age, the inner side stained dark with the rubbing of Padfoot’s fur. It looks well worn and well-loved. Remus did love him as well as he could, Sirius knows that. And he must have loved him well enough, for Sirius has survived, despite everything. He is here with his heart in his hands, ready to give it again. 

“It won’t come apart when someone tugs on the D-ring,” Sirius says. “I promise.”

Draco takes the collar, his long fingers turning it over. And then over again, taking in the fine stitching, the goblin-hammered silver. 

“It’s beautiful,” Draco says softly. “But what do you—I mean, does it—”

“No strings attached,” Sirius clarifies hastily. “I’m not asking you to wear it for me. It’s a gift, for you to wear or not, as you like. I’m giving it to you as confirmation of your acceptance into the… how did you put it? ‘The club of disowned heirs of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.’ With all the rights and responsibilities thereunto pertaining. Including the right to be a dirty kinky queer as much as your heart desires.” Sirius drops into his chair again so his eyes are level with Draco’s. “And I promise you won’t be alone. There are loads of us.”

Draco puts the collar around his neck and fastens the buckle. Strokes the leather. His eyes close, going somewhere inside himself, testing. He puts his finger through the D-ring and gives a little tug. Takes a long breath. At last he opens his eyes and asks, his voice shy but steady, “Could I wear this with you sometime?” 

“I’d like that very much,” is all Sirius says aloud. But his whole body feels as if it’s vibrating. As if, somewhere deep inside him, Padfoot is wagging his tail.

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> The detail about Pureblood keys biting anyone but their owners is the brainchild of lefthandofglory, and first appeared in [Sucker,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10443657) a fic we wrote together.


End file.
